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What the Hell Is Going On

WTH: The Mythical MAGA Split on Iran. Kristen Soltis Anderson Explains.

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

News, Politics, History, Government

4.4633 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story from mainstream media is that the core of MAGA is "split" on the war with Iran, strikes in Venezuela, the Houthis, and other Trump 2.0 international policies. This supposed "MAGA schism" over foreign policy challenges Trump's coalition of America First isolationists and hawkish establishment Republicans. But the data tells a different story. Drawing on our coverage of the Reagan National Defense Survey and the work of our guest Kristen Soltis Anderson, we find no evidence of such a divide. In fact, MAGA voters appear overwhelmingly hawkish and strongly supportive of President Trump’s military operations, particularly in Iran. If a divide does exist within the Republican Party, it is more likely generational than ideological. What might that mean for the future of conservative foreign policy leadership? And as we look to 2028, what does a successful Republican candidate project on foreign policy according to the polls?

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster, speaker, TV personality, New York Times opinion writer, commentator, and author. Kristen is Founding Partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm that serves brands, trade associations, nonprofits, and political clients. She is an on-air political contributor at CNN and previously has been a contributor to Fox News Channel and ABC News. She currently writes the newsletter “Codebook” on Substack and is the author of, “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (and How Republicans Can Keep Up).”

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.

0:03.1

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share.

0:07.1

Thanks for listening. Here's our show.

0:08.7

What the hell is going on?

0:10.5

What's really going on?

0:12.0

We said, what the hell happened?

0:13.5

You don't have to know what the hell is on it.

0:15.6

They see what's going on.

0:16.7

I don't know what's going on.

0:18.0

What is going on?

0:20.0

We must find out what's going on. What is going on? We must find out what is going on.

0:31.0

Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

0:32.9

And I'm Mark Tiesin.

0:34.1

Welcome to our podcast.

0:35.5

What the hell is going on?

0:37.2

Mark, what the hell? What the hell is going on? Mark, what the hell?

0:38.6

What the hell is going on is we have Kristen Soltes Anderson on the pod today to talk about the

0:43.7

polling of mega voters on Iran and on foreign policy. And so there's this, there's the mainstream media,

0:52.2

I don't know what we call them corporate media, left-wing media,

0:55.3

is trying to push this narrative that there's a, there's a mega split over Iran, right?

1:01.7

They see people like Tucker and Candace Owens and my old friend Megan Kelly sort of pushing against the war

1:10.7

and that this is causing a rift in the Trump coalition.

...

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